Enter Sandman
by Annber03
Summary: Reid finds solace and understanding in the most unexpected of ways.


_Inspired by Reid referencing the well-known Metallica song of the same title in "Extreme Aggressor" (and the song is, of course, on YouTube for those out there who may not be familiar with it and would like to give it a listen…or those who are familiar with it and still want to give it a listen!). __I just love the idea that someone like him would have some familiarity with this group and this song._

* * *

There were many, many things in this world that Spencer Reid knew of, or about.

Wanted to hear all the census information about a random town? Reid was your go-to guy. Curious as to facts about how many fires a serial killer set? Reid, at your service. Wondering about all the complexities of string theory? Reid could prattle on and on and on…and on…

For those who knew Spencer Reid on any level, his ability to pull anything from the seemingly bottomless space that was his brain never ceased to amaze them. Or impress them. Or (and this reaction was the most common one) freak them out. Just a little bit, anyway. He was the encyclopedia, the card catalog, the dictionary, thesaurus, and world almanac all rolled into one.

Sometimes his information was welcomed, sometimes it wasn't, but either way, one could never claim to hang around Reid for any length of time and not have learned _something _in the process.

And after a while, people got used to Reid knowing of scientific theories or complex mathematical equations or unusual histories of criminals. These were his main interests, these were things that he was expected to know, either as part of his job or as the result of just being a plain old nerdy, geeky sort of guy.

Derek Morgan, however, had the distinction of being the first, and only, person to learn of Reid's knowledge of a truly _un_expected subject once. A subject that most people, were they to simply look at him, would naively think they'd _finally_ left him completely stumped about. On one level, Morgan wasn't _totally_ surprised that Reid knew about the topic at hand – he was the one to introduce him to rap music, after all, and wouldn't have been fazed at all to hear his young teammate going off about Nas all of a sudden.

Still, Reid's response to _this_ particular subject the two of them were discussing caused him to raise an eyebrow in an expression of curiosity anyway.

That subject? Metal rock bands.

Or, more accurately, _a _metal rock band, anyway.

* * *

He'd first heard the song back in high school. It had been around a couple years already by the time he'd entered that stage of his education, but if the musical tastes of his classmates was anything to go by, the band, and the song, had found themselves quite a devoted fanbase, and the group was riding high on its popularity in those days.

Music was one of those rare things that weren't exactly Reid's forte. He didn't play any instruments, and he didn't know tons of musical groups. That said, he still held a deep appreciation and respect for music as a creative outlet in and of itself. He could explain the technical skill and composition of a song with ease. To him, it was simple math, and with a little practice, he could probably master learning to play an instrument fairly quickly if he ever decided to do such a thing.

His interest in the technical aspects of a song didn't mean that Reid couldn't be taken in by the emotional, thoughtful aspects of music, however. He remembered quite clearly all the songs from his mom's youth that she used to play around the house when he was a little boy, the lyrics that he read within her journals. She liked a lot of folksy stuff, singer-songwriters like Bob Dylan, Peter, Paul, and Mary, Pete Seeger, and so on. Artists who wrote lyrics with _meaning_, who were literate, verbose, passionate. Which made sense, given her career as an English professor. Some of Reid's vocabulary and language skills he'd learned over the years were the result of reading and listening to the lyrics of some of his mom's favorite artists.

His dad wasn't as much of a musical sort, but he did appreciate the occasional classical piece, and Reid had one memory from his very young days of seeing his parents dancing together in the kitchen one evening to some slow song. What the song was, Reid never did find out…but the image was one he'd clung to in the ensuing years.

Reid himself was very into classical music. No lyrics involved, so he didn't have to feel forced to try and sing along – he'd never felt he'd had much of a singing voice. He hated hearing himself simply speak some days, what with his voice being so squeaky and pitchy. Listening to instrumental pieces meant he could focus instead on the way the composers created the music, like a huge, complicated puzzle they'd put together. The dynamics, from soft to loud and soft again, fascinated him, too, and he'd learned to pick out various instruments from hearing them in a composition.

Plus, classical music was relaxing. Soothing. Whenever he'd had a rough day at school, or wanted to drown out his parents fighting, or escape his mom's increasingly bizarre behavior for a few hours, he'd hide out in his room and put on some Beethoven or Mozart or Rachmaninov or any other composer one could think of, and drift off, letting his mind put pictures to the music, creating fantasy worlds for him to slip away through. He'd read up on his favorite musicians as well, finding out the stories behind the classical pieces, the romantic longings and painful tragedies that made their way into the creation of the songs, and he'd visualize those stories as he listened.

He'd long ago realized his unusual interests were just another in the long list of reasons why he stuck out so much at school. Nobody else he went to school with, whether they were twelve years old (like him) or seventeen years old (like his classmates), cared about his parents' music. And _classical_? That was _boring_. Only lame old adults listened to that. That was the stuff teachers put on to try and make the other kids actually care about doing schoolwork or being smart or all that other junk. And when he did hear many of his classmates talk about the music they liked, they never really analyzed the lyrics or seemed all that interested in the craft itself. All they cared about was whether it "kicked ass", or they'd try creating their own bands to follow in their favorite bands' footsteps…often with disastrous results. They cared more about looking cool and getting girls than learning a new talent.

Therefore, after much mocking and sneering upon revealing his particular musical tastes and knowledge, Reid learned very quickly to keep quiet and say nothing about music in general. At least, not on school grounds.

So when he first heard of a popular rock group named Metallica, a group that all his classmates were talking about, as well as any other bands that sounded even remotely like them, Reid didn't dare get involved in the discussion. If the kids at school had heard his opinion on their musical tastes _this_ time around…

* * *

He simply wanted to brush off the song he'd heard by this particular band, or at least, the snippet he'd caught. The song was called "Enter Sandman", apparently, and while the title had Reid intrigued, the pounding, chugging rhythms of the song's music, amplified even more by the booming bass (which, thanks to the song echoing out from one of his classmate's cars, nearly seemed to create an earthquake), were enough to give him a headache and kill his interest in listening any further. The constant disruption to his concentration on his studies didn't help matters, either. Lunch hour was about the only time he got a chance to do more work outside of his classes…and of course, that was the time that all the other kids were out and about and being noisy.

The lead singer's voice was too gruff for his liking as well, too aggressive and menacing. Very much the definition of an alpha male type of guy – i.e., the kinds of guys Reid found himself dodging as he roamed the school halls day in and day out. The guys who caused a deep sense of dread to flood through him the moment his school even came into view each morning. Who made his life a living hell in all sorts of painful ways.

No, judging from his reactions to this song, that sort of music simply wasn't for Reid. He didn't mind others enjoying it, and he hated automatically dismissing a piece of music's worth based on his own personal feelings about it. He just didn't get the appeal, though, and that was that.

Until, one day, something changed.

Yet another car was blaring the song. The owner of said car was chatting away with a friend, raving about the concert they'd just seen over the weekend. Reid sighed, exasperated, gathering up his things and preparing to search for another quiet spot to study. Easier said than done, however. He seemed to be running out of secluded spots with each passing day.

A particular lyric from the now infamous song caught his ear this time around, however, as he started to head off. He stopped then, cocking his head slightly as he continued to listen.

_Was that…was that the Lord's Prayer being uttered? _

He turned towards the car, a bewildered expression on his face now.

_And were they seriously putting a child's nursery rhyme into such a tough, aggressive, punishing song? _

_How very odd._ Yet Reid stood still then, continuing to listen with a hint of surprise, actually looking, dare he say, impressed.

The band seemed to actually understand the dark implications within the Lord's Prayer (_"__If I die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take."_ ) and the nursery rhyme ("_Hush, little baby, don't say a word_…"). Most people never gave those lyrics a second thought. The nursery rhyme was quite a common song for parents to hum to their babies – Reid recalled his mom murmuring it to him a time or two when he was a toddler. On the surface, it was a song that sounded quite sweet, with all its promises of gifts for a child (_"__Gonna buy you a mockingbird…", "Gonna buy you a diamond ring…"_).

But of course, they'd get those gifts if they remained quiet, as the rhyme noted. A simple promise, but the wrong hands (as Reid would find out later on through his line of work), that promise could easily become a threat, a means of control. The constant promise of new gifts "if" the old ones failed also resonated with Reid. Parents couldn't be guaranteed to make everything a child wanted work, or be fixed. He'd become all too familiar with that concept a couple years ago with his own parents.

And the Lord's Prayer. What child wants to think of death before going to bed at night? Why should any child have to "ask" that their soul be guaranteed to be taken in such an event? Reid had long been fascinated by the Bible, had been taught about it by his parents, but the older he got and the more he studied it, he found the idea of adults teaching children about some of the book's darker themes rather amusing. _Strike fear in them while they're young, I suppose._

Reid didn't know if the band had studied that prayer and rhyme as in depth as he had, but still, the fact remained that they seemed aware of the hidden meanings to both on _some_ level, in order to put them in such a song as this. He was intrigued now, to the point where, the next time he heard that song, he started sticking around to listen to it in full. As he did so, he discovered more within the lyrics that he could appreciate, even relate to. It became something of a catharsis for him.

At one point the singer insisted one "never mind the noises" that scared them. That sent Reid into memories of trying to calm his mom while she screamed during one of her freakouts. Covering his ears whenever his parents yelled at each other. Hearing her crying in her room at night as he passed down the hall, only for her to not be able to explain why she was so sad when he asked.

Other lines in the song about "beasts" in one's head or "heavy thoughts" at night were a particular punch to the gut for him. He found himself thinking of those lines one day not long afterward, when he went through his almost daily ritual of trying to coax his mom out of bed.

_"__You have to get up. You have a doctor's appointment today," he'd pleaded. _

_"__You know how I feel about that…that…charlatan," his mom had snarled in response. That was all she'd said before curling back up under her covers, slowly drifting back to sleep. _

Reid, as usual, was left to his own devices after that. He wandered down to the park for a while and played a couple games of chess. His mom, meanwhile, hadn't left her bed for a couple days during that whole incident.

Not that it was really much better when she was up and about, though. Even then, there were still the paranoid thoughts that plagued her mind, the bizarre stories and images she'd discussed, be it with Reid or in her journals. He'd quietly listen to her ranting away and attempt to talk her down, with varying levels of success.

Either that, or he'd later read through all her nonsensical journal entries, noticing, with increasing dismay, how her writing seemed to become ever more erratic day by day. He'd see all the quotes from various poets and singers at random, trying to decipher any possible rhyme or reason as to why she put those lines down, often failing in the process.

Those lyrics also reminded him of the fact that he had to deal with the knowledge that his mother's illness was a genetic one, and any fears and worries he had about that information made him wonder if his own mind was slipping some days.

Oh, and of course, there was the letter his dad had left him that he could recite word for word, explaining why he had to leave. And the memory of him sitting on the couch in the living room, trying not to cry as his mom tried to explain that they were going to be all right, the two of them.

"We'll take care of each other," she'd promised him. And even in the midst of all the chaos both then and now, Reid still chose to believe that promise to be true.

He was also very intrigued by the song's references to the Sandman, a notable character in folklore who was often seen as good, for he would sprinkle children with dust at night as they fell asleep in the hopes of bringing them pleasant dreams. Reid's mother had told him about the Sandman when he was young, and would sometimes leave his room at night with the parting words, "May the Sandman bless you tonight."

The Sandman never seemed to come for Reid, though. His recurring dreams of a deceased boy were a testament to that fact, as were the dreams of seeing his dad, calling out to him, only for his father to slowly disappear before his eyes. Then there were the monsters his mom insisted were real alongside the taunting, abusive attacks from his classmates, all of which infiltrated his brain, keeping him awake, stressed, and sometimes crying at night.

_It's probably just as well the Sandman doesn't visit. Someone, or something, sneaking into a child's room at night and sprinkling them with dust sounds creepy and stupid anyway_.

All of this stress became more fuel for him to throw himself into his schoolwork as a result. He had no choice. He couldn't talk about any of this with other people. _They'll take me away from my mom. Make me go to a counselor. _He'd have to listen to people scrutinize his life, answer some very awkward, uncomfortable questions. And God forbid any of his classmates found out about what he was going through!

_They won't understand. Nobody ever understands._

Except for this band of people, apparently. Reid knew nothing about these musicians, not even their names, but they seemed like they had some firsthand familiarity with the topics they sang about. They seemed to get the push and pull between wanting someone to help take your nightmares away and choosing to try and ignore them, pretending to forget they existed in the first place, all at the same time. It seemed there was more than met the eye with these people.

And, emotional release this song seemed to bring aside, the music didn't sound too dissimilar to some of the heavier pieces of classical music he was so fond of, either, now that he thought about it. There were many compositions he could think of that sounded just as dark, intense, punishing, and dramatic as the music in this song did. In fact, those who lived in the composers' time periods sometimes reacted quite negatively to those more grandiose pieces. The music actually _scared_ them. They found it demonic, lowly, offensive, atonal.

Reid smiled to himself as he realized he'd heard a few of his teachers say similar things about this band whenever they'd heard their music playing somewhere. _Apparently some attitudes haven't changed over the centuries._

All of these realizations, all of this newfound appreciation for this band, or at least, this particular song of theirs, anyway, didn't mean Reid was going to automatically turn into a "metalhead" anytime soon, mind. He still liked his classical music, he still liked studying the complexities of a composition, he still tended to prefer songs from before his time.

But Reid always had been one to welcome any new discoveries and ways of thinking, and if a band like Metallica provided that sort of opportunity for him, then so be it.

He _wasn't _alone. Other people shared the same fears he did. Even the bullies in school. Their insistence on being cruel to others had to stem from somewhere, after all…maybe they had the same sorts of problems that Reid did, and just hadn't figured out a healthier way to express their frustration. Maybe this song, this band, brought them the same sort of comfort and release Reid had felt, too. He still braced himself every time he came to school, still had nightmares about what his classmates did to him. But now Reid looked at his tormentors with a new level of understanding, and, at times, even some compassion and sympathy.

Reid kept his newfound lessons in mind anytime he heard the song somewhere in the following years. Not that his particularly sharp memory would ever let him forget this tune – he was surprised to find the song even popped up in his head from time to time during his early days in the BAU as well.

That seemed appropriate, though. Thanks to the song's dark, ominous, creepy atmosphere, Reid always sensed it _would_ make for a perfect song for an unsub. He could easily see where someone could listen to "Enter Sandman" and take it literally, using it for influential purposes rather than as a means of reflection.

And eventually, one day, as always, he was proven right.

* * *

Reid and Morgan found themselves sitting in the bedroom of their latest unsub. They'd torn his room apart to discover more about his personality, and in the process had explored his music collection. He was a hard rock fan, from their observations.

_Typical. Aggressive man listens to aggressive music._ Sometimes these people made their job way too easy.

But none of what they'd found seemed to specifically get at what they wanted to find out about the man. It took Reid paying attention to the blatantly obvious – an empty CD case and a laptop nearby – for them to find the hint they were looking for.

Reid tried to keep his expression neutral as he noticed the artist name at the top of the CD Morgan now held in his hands.

"All right, so I'm an insomniac who listens to Metallica to go to sleep at night. What song could possibly speak to me?" Morgan mused as he stared at the disc.

Reid gave him a knowing look. "Enter Sandman."

* * *

_Reviews/critiques/etc. welcome, as always._


End file.
